MUSINGS ON BASEBALL FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER

Tag Archives: Defense

I’m sort of at a loss as to where to go next with this piece. I’m overwhelmed with inspiration. The opportunities are almost endless. I could go super over the top and enthusiastic, use some Caps Lock and exclamation points and ha ha ha my way through the throw. I could try faux-profundity, whip out the thesaurus and turn this thing into a metaphor for human frailty. I could write a poem, because this GIF is poetry. Since I’ve already established that I can’t decide (how fortunate for me), and because I’m lazy (indeed), I’ll leave the interpretation of Delmon’s throw to the reader. This throw is whatever you want it to be, it’s a gift from baseball to you, the loyal and deserving fanatic. Cherish it. Hold on to it and don’t let it go. Predicting baseball is a fool’s errand, it’s folly, but there is no substitute for the satisfaction of being right.

Jack Wilson had himself a baseball career, you could definitely say that and not be wrong. 12 seasons, almost 1,300 hits, 14.2 fWAR. Not notable, really. Extremely amazing and successful from one perspective, kind of boring and unremarkable from another. Perspective is everything. Jack Wilson was on the Seattle Mariners for a while, and being a fan of that stupid team, I got a chance to watch him play with some frequency. He was equally parts interesting and frustrating. He was kind of a goofball, and he couldn’t hit, but the dude was really good at defense. So good at defense. A glove wizard at shortstop is one of my favorite things in all of baseball and Jack Wilson was capable of being just that. At least the Mariners can fulfill me in this way, hopefully forever. In honor of Wilson’s retirement, and even though he was manning second base at the time, I’d like us to remember his greatest defensive play as a Mariner, and one of the best defensive plays I’ve ever witnessed with my eyes and brain and heart.

In today’s Dave Cameron FanGraphs chat—generally an online destination where baseball enthusiasts discuss Justin Upton, Jesus Montero, and Trevor Bauer—a chatter posed the following question and received the following answer:

With this striking and humorous image in mind, and because I’m a full-grown adult who has a healthy grasp on time management and life priorities, I read the above words and then proceeded to compose the following: